Coming Home (30 page)

‘No need.’ I was more than happy to go back up to Warwick. I could do with some time out from Woodside.

I hung up with a massive smile on my face then I stomped down the stairs, rehearsing my words in my head as I went. Mum was tidying up the boxes of china. I stood behind the sofa, its flowery bulk squatted between us.

‘Just to let you know,’ I said, ‘I’m going to see Tom tomorrow.’

She didn’t look up.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but it’s not all about you. I lost my brother. I can’t believe you knew about Tom and didn’t tell me I had a half-brother.’

‘It wasn’t my news to tell—’

I held up a hand to stop her. ‘And now I know about Tom, I’m not going to miss the chance to get to know him. I’m telling you because I don’t think we should have any more secrets, especially now it’s just us.’ I waited, but Mum didn’t say anything. I wanted a reaction. ‘You can’t stop me,’ I said. ‘It’s bad enough you hid it from me all these years. The least you can do is let me get to know him now.’

Finally, she looked at me, her mouth pursed into the little flat line I remembered from times I’d misbehaved as a child.

‘I’m not stopping you, Evie,’ she said, and turned back to the china.

T
he Dirty Duck was Warwick University’s campus pub. I wondered how it’d got its name. Still, the pub itself was much smarter than I remembered the bars being in my own university days and it was already, at midday, packed with students. I found a table and ordered a pint of my own—I barely ever drank beer but, given I was already about ten years older than most of the clientele, I put it down to camouflage. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself.

The customers seemed a friendly crowd, jovial, joshing and more carefree than the stressed professionals I tended to hang out with, too young as they were for mortgages, job stress and babies. I kept my eyes on my phone, pretending to be tapping away at some important task while all my senses, my peripheral vision, and the nerves in the back of my neck took in what was going on around me. The steady buzz of conversation was punctuated by an occasional shout or burst of laughter. I was aware of the scrape of cutlery on plate, the clunk of glass on table. Even though I started every time the door opened I still, somehow, missed the moment that Tom walked in.

Suddenly, my brother was beside my table. After years of squeezing the word ‘brother’ out of my vocabulary, it felt odd to think it. I wondered what Graham would have thought had he been able to see me now. It occurred to me that Tom would have been Graham’s half-brother, too. Three of us. Soon to be four. That was weird.

‘Hi.’ Tom shrugged off his coat, threw it over the chair across from me.

I jumped up, knocking the table and slopping beer over the side of my glass despite the fact I’d already drunk a good quarter of the pint.

‘Hi!’ A pause. ‘So what can I get you? My round—to make up for last time?’

‘You can stop apologising about that right now,’ said Tom. ‘But I’ll have a pint, cheers.’ He looked around, waved hello to a few people, sat down.

‘Are you … OK now?’ Tom asked, as I deposited his glass in front of him at the table and slid back into my seat.

‘Yeah. Look, I’m sorry about what happened. It was a massive shock. I’d had no idea.’

‘Understandable. It’s hardly a normal situation, is it?’

‘You can say that again.’ There was a silence as we both sipped our drinks.

‘I just wish he’d come clean. It may have been horrible for a while, but it would have made things so much better in the end,’ Tom said. ‘No more secrets.’

‘I know. How did you feel about him when you first found out? I’m going round in circles. I can’t help thinking he was a coward in the way he handled all this.’

‘I went through the same thing. I blamed him, too,’ said Tom. ‘I guess, ultimately, it was his mess and he should have manned up and sorted it out. I can just imagine how much better it would have been for us: no more creeping around. You know we were banned from ever going to Woodside? In case we bumped into you? And Mum didn’t ever want anyone to question my “legitimacy”, so she pretended to be married? She’s spent her whole adult life pretending to be married.’

‘I haven’t thought about that side of it. It never occurred to me that you were illegitimate.’

Tom laughed, rueful. ‘Yup. I’m the “bastard” of the family. It obviously bothered Mum because she wore—still wears—a ring on her wedding finger. I never questioned it when I was growing up. I suppose she just put it on so no one would ask questions, and referred obliquely to Dad as her “husband”. She told everyone he worked away from home.’

‘Were you ever jealous? Of me?’ My finger traced patterns in the condensation on my glass. I’d have been jealous had the situation been reversed.

‘Well, I didn’t know about you for ages. And when I found out, I suppose yes, for a bit. But when I calmed down I started thinking about what Dad had given Mum and me. It’s not like he was an absent Dad. Mum kept telling me that he didn’t have to spend time with us; he came because he wanted to. And, honestly, he was great when he was with us.’

‘How do you mean “great”?’

‘Well, you must remember? He must have been the same with you? The Mastermind Challenge? Lego? The bedtime
stories? He never missed a night. I loved having him read to me; it was my favourite part of the day, the way he did those funny voices. I used to love his Paddington voice. Do you remember how he used to say “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”?’ Tom laughed. ‘I can’t do it as well as him. He used to help me with my homework as well. That was brilliant, as I used to have projects to do over the weekend—if it was history, wow, he was amazing at coming up with ideas for history projects. He was good at science, too. He loved building junk models and all that crap we had to do. He must have done the same with you? Maybe that’s why he was so good—he’d already gone through it all with you.’

Tom laughed, but I shook my head. I couldn’t say anything. I hadn’t had homework before Graham died, then Dad had changed, withdrawn. He’d never, not once, asked me about my homework, let alone helped me with it. He’d stopped reading to me when I was eight; stopped playing Mastermind with me; never played Lego with me. It was like Tom had had everything that I should have had; everything Dad should have given me but, somehow felt he couldn’t. It was my turn to be jealous. I’d never have imagined he’d have been such an attentive dad to his illegitimate child.

‘He taught me to ride my bike, too,’ said Tom. He looked carefully at me; his voice was softer.

‘No. No, he wouldn’t have done that.’ I sat stock still, my voice barely audible. ‘After … after …’ I thought of Dad’s bike, banished to the attic.

‘He didn’t want to. But Mum made him. She said he
mustn’t let Graham’s accident define him forever. They fought about it. I heard them shouting about it after I was in bed, but he did it in the end. He did it for her. I’ll never forget him running along behind me the first time I rode without stabilisers. He pretended to be holding on and, when I turned around, he was the other side of the playground.’ Tom paused. ‘He started riding again, too. We went for bike rides.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said. I pushed back my chair and elbowed my way through the bar, stumbling through groups of drinkers, searching for the toilets. How could he? I hadn’t been allowed to ride my bike ever again. Slamming down the toilet seat, I sat on it, my head in my hands, my breathing hard and fast. I needed time to compose myself. Tom’s revelation had told me one thing, underlined what I’d known all along; the one thing I didn’t want to admit that, while Mum and I had continued living for twenty years in the shadow of Graham’s death, Dad—the person under whose umbrella of care the accident had happened—had moved on.

‘It’s not Tom’s fault,’ I told myself. ‘No matter how much it hurts, it’s not his fault. It’s not his fault, it’s not his fault, it’s not his fault.’

‘I wondered if you were coming back,’ said Tom when I returned to the table, a fragile smile on my face.

It’s not his fault
. I said it over and over in my head as I sat down. I’d only been gone a few minutes, but Tom had pretty much drained his glass. ‘It’s just … there are just so
many shocks at the moment. I feel like I’m constantly being slapped on one cheek, then the other.’

‘It’s been a lot for you to learn in the last couple of weeks, hasn’t it? On top of Dad, too.’

‘Put it this way,’ I said. ‘When I left Dubai, I had no idea, no idea at all, about any of this. I thought I was coming to help Mum find Dad’s Will, get in some sherry and get through the funeral. If I’d known about all this, maybe I’d have stayed put; invented an excuse; flown to India and hidden in an ashram.’

‘Really? Aren’t you glad you know now? That there are no more secrets? You’ve lost a dad, but you’ve gained a brother. That’s got to be worth something?’

‘It is. Of course it is.’

‘I remember how I felt when I found out. The fact that he’d been such a great dad made me all the more angry with him when I found out what he’d done—about you and your mum, I mean. I’d grown up thinking he was perfect; he was my hero. I expected so much more from him. Suddenly Dad wasn’t a superhero, he was a person who made mistakes—he was weak—and I felt so let down. So disappointed, Evie. I felt like he’d short-changed me. I’d believed in a person who didn’t exist. It was like learning that Santa doesn’t exist, or the tooth fairy, only a million times worse. I hated him.’

‘I can’t do that. How can I hate him? He’s dead.’

‘I know. It’s different for you.’

Tom went to the bar. I remembered the pouch I’d brought for him containing Dad’s watch and cufflinks. I’d taken
out the photos; he didn’t need those. It’s not his fault, I thought. He may as well have something to remind him of his ‘perfect’ Dad. While Tom was still at the bar, I put the pouch on the table, in his place.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, placing a fresh pint in front of me, another pint in front of him. He clearly thought we’d be here for some time.

‘Open it.’

‘Oh goodness,’ he said, pulling out the cufflinks. ‘I remember these.’ He pulled out the watch, passed a hand through his hair. ‘Oh God, and his watch. What are you going to do with them?’

‘Would you like them?’

Tom looked at me, his eyes full of hope, as if he thought I was joking. ‘Really? Are you sure?’

I nodded.

‘I’d love them. Thank you. Thank you so much, Evie. You know, Dad set up a Trust for me because I couldn’t be in the Will. But it was just financial. I had nothing of his. Nothing to remember him by. I guess he overlooked that bit. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.’

‘I wanted you to have them. It’s not like I’d wear them.’ I didn’t tell him about Mum throwing out everything else. I was feeling much calmer again now. Seeing Tom’s pleasure at having the watch and cufflinks made me feel a genuine bond with him for the first time. It made me realise how much Dad had meant to him, too; that there were two of us in life who could call the same man ‘Dad’.

‘It’s weird, isn’t it, that we both grew up in a web of
lies?’ I asked, realising as I said it how true it was. We’d both been lied to.

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘So how do you feel about it now? Now you’ve had so long to get over it? It’s all still new to me. I can’t imagine ever getting my head around this.’

‘Well, as I said, I was angry with Dad to begin with. But then I started to get over it. I started to think of him as a good person caught in a bad situation. He just wanted to do the best by both of us. I think he wanted to be there for both his children. He just went about it the wrong way.’

‘I’d like to believe that, too,’ I said.

‘We can believe what we want now he’s gone. And we have a new sibling on the way.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

Tom chewed his lip. ‘Excited? Jealous? That kid will grow up without the lies.’

‘But without a dad,’ I pointed out.

‘True.’ There was a silence. Tom looked at his glass, then up at me. ‘And how do you feel about my mum?’ he asked. ‘You know it’s not entirely her fault either. She always wanted to know you. It wasn’t her idea to keep us apart. I used to hear her arguing with Dad about it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. She hated the lies, too. She’d love to see you. She’ll be able to tell you so much more; answer all your questions.’

‘Hmm.’

‘So would you do it? Meet her?’ A pause. ‘Please?’

I sighed. I have to admit, I was curious. I wanted to look at Zoe again, knowing what I now knew. I wanted to see what it was that Dad had seen in her.

‘OK.’

I
t wasn’t late when I got home, but Mum was already in bed, her light still on. I crept upstairs and popped my head around the door. Fast asleep, still propped up on her pillows, the library book she’d been reading still lying open on the duvet. She looked so suburban, so normal in her white
broderie anglaise
nightie, rollers in her hair, a tube of hand cream next to her.

In sleep, her face was at peace, but the open packet of sleeping tablets on the bedside table told another story. She was a woman who, twenty years after the death of her son, still needed medication to get to sleep. Who knew what demons haunted her dreams? Our whole family had experienced Graham’s death, lived with the aftermath, but it had left very different scars engraved on each of our souls. Mum had surprised me so much since Dad died that I was beginning to wonder if I knew her at all. I’d always seen her as weak, as someone who needed protecting, but now I began to wonder. It must have taken a great deal of strength to live with the knowledge that she’d had. Could I have done the same?

I closed the book, set it back on the table and clicked off the light. I needed to talk to someone. The day had been too momentous to get through alone. I called Luca. ‘Can I come over?’

Luca’s apartment was the antithesis to Mum’s silent house. I could hear loud music before I even got to the door. Classical. That surprised me.